As businesses become increasingly global and multinationals seek the optimal platform for economic growth, cross-border assignments of executives have become more common and more important. While technology has played a key role in global working arrangements, it has not eroded the need to have people deployed ‘on the ground’. Each international assignment requires careful planning, documentation and time to execute properly, and each combination of permanent and host country will present new challenges. It is critical that companies, and the lawyers who advise them, anticipate and plan for these challenges, particularly as the scope of these assignments – and the law - continue to evolve. The appropriate assignment structure differs from job to job, company to company and country to country. However, the assignment is structured, it is important to understand and anticipate the attendant legal issues and risks in the documents. This session will consider key provisions for global mobility policies; the myriad compensation and benefits issues, such as retirement plan considerations, tax equalisation, social security totalisation agreements and other tax considerations; the nature of different international assignment options, from short-term assignments to secondments, cross-border transfers and local hiring; identifying the right person for an international assignment; the role of family situations in making these decisions; dealing with the return of the employee from the expatriate assignment; and, often overlooked but most critically, how to deal with possible termination of employment and discipline issues.